November 27, 2011 9:21pm ESTNovember 27, 2011 1:25pm ESTThe new labor deal calls for fundamental changes, but if the NBA is truly concerned about improving its product, it should be considering several other revisions--starting with dumping the age limit. Winners, losers

The NBA and players have the framework of a new labor deal, which means that Donald Sterling, Dan Gilbert and Michael Jordan are happy. And at it’s core, that’s what the five-month lockout was about, making the sport better for the people who run it.

But if the NBA was committed to making the sport better for everybody else—for its players and fans—as it was for itself, it would be looking at some other fundamental changes. Changes that help the players and improve the sport for the paying customers might make the higher-ups swallow hard. But they wouldn’t, if they really have the long-term well being of the game at heart.

Or if they value every faction of the game and want them all treated fairly.

If they do, this is what they would do:

Dump the age limit. The NBA can’t sell the notion that the game is better because it prohibits players entering before age 19 or before they’re a year out of high school, and it never could. Its arguments were more about public relations -- having recognizable players from the college ranks to market as rookies -- and starting the free-agency clock later. The union, meanwhile, was more interested in protecting its older members’ jobs and contracts than treating its incoming members justly.

This age-limit is bad, so any possibility that it will be bumped up another year, to age 20 and/or two years out of high school, is unwarranted. It also duplicates the very problem that sparked the lockout -- teams enacting rules to protect themselves from their own incompetence, in this case developing, handling and retaining young players poorly.

If preparing young players for long-term success is that important, the NBA would make its developmental league a true alternative path to the league, instead of the half-measure it is now.

There is enough evidence to suggest that players can succeed at the NBA level immediately after high school. You can beat everybody over the head with Korleone Young and Leon Smith for only so long.

Permanently shorten the regular season. The proposal for now is to play 66 post-lockout games this season. That’s a lot better than the 50-gamer after the 1998-99 lockout. It’s still a bit too short but not by much. What’s certain is that 82 is too long, and has been for a while. Splitting the difference gives us 74 games; 72, a nice round number of 10 lopped off, would be ideal.

Realistically, every game beyond that brings diminishing returns. The grind is too much and too long, physically and mentally. The travel schedule has grown nearly insane with expansion and new, more scattered markets and is only slightly relieved by charter flights.

There just isn’t a sane way to address it all that won’t raise, at best, the concern that players can’t give their all every night -- and at worst, the damning stereotype that they’re lazy.

That many games, not including training camp, preseason and playoffs, is unreasonable. Tack on the obligations now required for U.S. national team players, in Olympic years, world championship years and otherwise, and how can anybody expect players to not wear down, break down or both?

Anything that can prevent even one game in which, for example, the Nets play the fourth game in five nights at the end of a road trip against a Kings team coming off a four-game, five-night road trip of their own, makes the NBA better.

Kill all talk of contraction. It’s misguided for the same reason it was back when baseball dangled it a decade ago, during its own labor negotiation. Just as the Twin Cities and their fans didn’t deserve to pay the price for the Twins owners’ mismanagement, neither should, say, Sacramento or Charlotte or Minnesota fans pay for owners who can’t keep their franchise afloat, competitive or entertaining.

Least of all when these fans, and the other taxpayers in that city or state, had to pay, or will have to pay, for the arenas those owners demand.

Tune out the lies that are occasionally spread about contraction helping because there’s not enough talent to go around. There’s more talent coming from more places in the NBA now than there ever has been. There aren’t enough competent owners around, though -- and many of them either were hard-liners during the lockout, or they’re being suggested as contraction candidates.

To take one example, though, if the Kings are eliminated, the owners who put them in that position and who successfully played one market against another, the Maloofs, would be rewarded; the Sacramento fans, undeservedly, would be punished.

That hurts the NBA far more than the Eddy Curry or Gilbert Arenas contracts against which the league rebelled so fiercely. That should be enough reason to scrap the idea, as baseball did.

With its internal issues resolved, the NBA owes this to the rest of the sport. It should make these changes to make the NBA more enjoyable -- not just for those running it, but for those watching it, and those playing it.